We Have Peaches!

My inability to grow things might be turning around. I said, might so don’t go and get all excited thinking there will be fresh veggies for everyone in the neighborhood. But I am more hopeful than I was when this whole process started a few weeks ago.

I posted pictures the other day of my sprouting garden. If you missed that post, you can view it here. It’s doing even better now a few days later. The sprouts are continuing to grow and a few new ones have even broken through the ground.

The biggest surprise came yesterday though when we were weeding the hill. Jim discovered that our peach tree has oodles of peaches on it!! I’ll like to claim credit for this wonderful discovery, but it wouldn’t be right since it’s been a lonely forgotten tree up the hill. Four years ago right after we moved into our house a coworker of mine was giving away free peach trees. I of course took one, mainly for two reasons: 1. We just bought a new house and needed some landscaping and 2. Because we now live in Georgia (the Peach State) and everyone who lives here surely grows peach trees. I didn’t want to be that exception.

So I brought home my new peach tree and there it sat on our patio in the little bucket it came in for over a year. I would water it and care for it on the patio, but really didn’t expect it to live since it wasn’t planted in the ground as it should be. Well, the following year Jim dug the hole and the tree went into the ground up the hill. And that’s where the forgotten tree part of the story begins.

It’s been planted up the hill for two years now and doing its own thing. The hose doesn’t reach that far (good planning on our part huh?!) so it only got watered when it rained. And if you remember our weather has been crazy over the last few years. The first summer it was planted there was a drought and the following summer the floods. Very inconsistent.

But with all that said the peach tree has thrived. And like I mentioned, Jim discovered peaches on it for the first time!!

And since I didn’t expect this little tree to survive the lack of care we gave it, I know absolutely nothing about growing a peach tree! For instance some of my questions include the following:

Do we prune the branches?

Do we remove some of the peaches so that fewer thrive and grow bigger?

Do we have to spray it at all?

How do we know when the peaches are ripe?

When do we pick the peaches?

After we pick them will the tree continue to produce fruit all summer long?

What is the typical season for peaches grown in a backyard?

If anyone knows the answers to these questions, I would appreciate some advice. Or if you know someone who knows someone who may know someone, please direct them here to answer these for me. Now that our forgotten peach tree is producing fruit, I’d like to start taking better care of it. Better late than never huh?